@contramordor You are also subconsciously recognizing the exponential age. Don’t blink. Our children’s lives will look more different than their parents than at any time in the history of humanity.
USA. A potluck. Everyone brings one dish. I have never been so out of my depth in my life.
I was invited to a gathering. "Just bring a dish to share," they said. Simple words. I did not sleep for three days.
Because I understood instantly what this was. A summit. Every guest, a lord of their own house, arriving bearing tribute. And tribute is judged. Tribute is ranked. To bring the wrong dish to the wrong table is to fall in standing before your peers, possibly forever.
So I prepared. I made my finest dish. I carried it to the door with two hands and a straight back, braced for the weighing of my worth.
The first lord arrived with a bowl of orange powder noodles. Macaroni and cheese. The crowd roared. He set it down at the center of the table. The CENTER. I noted this. The center is the seat of power.
The second lord brought a tower of small brown meat orbs in red sauce. "Meatballs," he announced, like a man laying down a sword. They were placed beside the macaroni. A strong showing. An alliance, perhaps.
I studied the table like a battlefield map. Potato salad: defensive, reliable, old money. A vegetable tray, untouched, clearly a hostage offering no one expected to win. And then a woman walked in, raised a flat box overhead, and the entire room turned and CHEERED.
Pizza. She had brought pizza. Store-bought. Still in the box.
I was stunned. She had not even cooked it. And yet the people rejoiced as if a king had entered. I revised my entire understanding of the hierarchy on the spot. Effort means nothing here. Only the roar of the crowd decides rank.
I placed my dish down, humbly, near the napkins. A peasant's position. I accepted it.
And then a man tapped my shoulder, pointed at my dish, and said the words that changed everything.
"Whoa, did you make this? This is amazing. Everybody, you GOTTA try this guy's thing."
The room turned. The room came. The room ATE. My dish vanished in ninety seconds. The pizza woman herself took a second helping and looked at me with respect.
I had won the summit. By accident. With a dish I placed by the napkins.
I understand nothing about this country. I have never been happier. I am hosting the next one.
So tell me, America.
Is there a system to the potluck? A secret rank? A hidden law?
I have decided there is not.
You just bring the thing you love, and everyone eats it, and somehow everybody wins.
It is the most insane way to hold a war.
I will fight in every single one.
@lukerosiak Have liberals been advocating for universal health care for years under the false premise that health care is expensive due to the policies they've implemented elsewhere to allow foreigners to rob and defraud the entirety of the health care system? If so, tragically hilarious.
@america@Boopie714 Have liberals been advocating for universal health care for years under the false premise that health care is expensive due to the policies they've implemented elsewhere to allow foreigners to rob and defraud the entirety of the health care system? If so, tragically hilarious.
@america@Boopie714 Have liberals been advocating for universal health care for years under the false premise that health care is expensive due to the policies they've implemented elsewhere to allow foreigners to rob and defraud the entirety of the health care system? If so, tragically hilarious.
@Mike_Pence@WSJopinion I don't know if there is a Republican in the last two decades that has missed the mark as much as Mike Pence. This country is eroding at our feet, and he stands shouting into a void, milquetoast platitudes
@CMDarnton0 BTC is the 7th largest asset class in the world and the 2nd fastest adopted technology ever precisely bc of the fact that it has an abundant series of real world use cases.
@MargoinWNC The legislature and Roy cooper all receive back door deals from foreign lobbying groups and foreign corporations. It’s all a charade. BC has been sold out to foreigners. Started with the entire state pork industry being handed to the Chinese on a silver platter.